Slash Chords

A “slash chord” is a hybrid kind of chord. It simply means “play the given chord OVER the note after the slash”. In other words, in this example, we would have a C chord played, but the lowest note would be Ab (which of  course is not in the C chord).

What’s usually going on are “passing tones” that comprise a type of counter melody. I realize this is a hard concept to grasp in the abstract, but listen to the audio that goes with this lesson, and I think you’ll begin to understand.

Here’s an example of a “slash chord”:

Slash chords are just chords that have a bottom note other than the root — sometimes notes that aren’t in the chord at all. So you might encounter:

And that’s all you need to know about that!

Short lesson, but important. You would be surprised to know how many musicians have no idea what a slash chord is…

If you would like to learn lots more about chord progressions and what you can do with them to make your piano playing more exciting, click here or on the course below: